What city is the microbrew capital of the US? | Hacker News Reader

What city is the microbrew capital of the US?

pudding.cool

35 pointsalistairSH70 comments

I'm in Portland right now. The number of breweries in Oregon is mind blowing. I just visited a town of 7,000 people that has multiple craft breweries[1]. The reason Oregon has so many is the hipster foodie demographic, good water, a most importantly a plentiful supply of both hops[2] and barley from Pacific Northwest farms.

[1] http://oregoncraftbeer.org/breweries/

[2] http://www.oregonhops.org/

I think Bend stacks up pretty nicely on a per-capita basis.

Unpopular opinion: I wish the US did more wine though. Beer is great when it's hot and sunny out, but when it's cold/rainy/snowy out, I'll take wine or bourbon or a cocktail or something.

The US is the 4th largest wine producing country in the world. To be sure a significant portion of that is low quality wine made with grapes from California's Central Valley. But the US is a big wine producer across a wide spectrum of quality and cost points.

Wine production isn't really as widespread as beer in the US but that's partly a function of the climates where grapes grow well (and economically relative to their quality). Add in fruit wines and things are a bit more widespread.

Yeah, I used to live in Italy, which is 1st, and that's with a population of 60 million. I miss my wine: it's good and not expensive.

I used to like to take friends on a tour of the agricultural high school where my mother in law worked, and they produced some pretty good wine.

Bend is a great location. If you like wine, come over to Walla Walla sometime, it's a 5 hour drive from Bend and 4 hours from PDX.

A nod to your username, that's one of my favorite coffee shops on the Wet Side of the state. If one were to make the WW booze pilgrimage I suggest it would be worth also checking out the Spokane fermentation scene. It seems like there's a new craft brewery opening every week here and there are wineries and craft distilleries sprinkled all around the greater GEG area.

Sounds like the perfect weather for a nice, dark stout. I always look forward to the great seasonal stouts in the fall/winter.

To me it's about a smaller volume of something that is stronger and not very cold. I'm not thirsty with those weather conditions, usually.

Come visit California. We have too many wine regions to name.

Oregonians seem to overcompensate for their beer and undercompensate for their skiing. I came from Colorado; when I say Oregon skiing's good I get strange looks, but when I say the beer scene is equal, them's fightin' words.

Rankings aside, I thought the data was very well presented and the visual story telling aspect was nicely done. Great use of SVG animations.

Santa Rosan checking in. Can confirm, we have a lot of really great breweries here. I'm surprised there was no mention of Pliney the Younger by Russian River Brewery in the article. This town fills up with people from around the world when that beer comes out. I've never actually tried it because I have better things to do than wait in line for 3 hours for a beer. Especially when there are so many top shelf selections to choose from.

It is a little odd that Russian River doesn't show up in the "Top Breweries" list. I like Bear Republic, but I would go to RR any day over them, and not just for Pliny.

Vermonter checking in. Can confirm, we do love the hops.

I believe there are four or five brewers in my home town of Brattleboro, population ~12K. And then there's this phenomenon: http://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2015-07-29/how-small-vermo...

PNW probably has the most breweries and microbreweries per capita. Between Vancouver, Portland and Seattle and a myriad of other smaller places (Eugene etc) there's been an explosion over the last 20 years. I guess when it rains all the time people need social indoor spaces. In more urban areas Ii's become the norm for every neighborhood to get their own brewery within somewhat walking distance.

With an over abundance of excellent breweries and tons of data I'll forgive any of these lists (top breweries, top beers, best cities etc) for introducing some form of bias. It's inevitable.

One flaw I will take issue with in the 'microbrew capital' list is that it's somewhat irrelevant when you take into account distribution. Hill Farmstead and The Alchemist will make anyone's top ten yet they are not in catchment for Burlington VT.

I'm also truly surprised not to see Boston show up anywhere on this list no matter how I tweak the inputs. There are multiple dozens of breweries within the metro area.

Without question, Portland ME is a mecca. But MA & VT cities don't seem to make the cut while clearly over representing in the 'top' lists?

I'll take this list with a pinch of Irish Moss to damp it down a little.

Here's one of the more compelling brewery reports I've seen recently

http://flowingdata.com/2015/10/26/top-brewery-road-trip-rout...

I had the same reaction about Boston, and decided to look a little closer.

I am not sure how the city selection works. Tree House is more than 50 miles from Boston, so it doesn't get included. But if you move the selector to 1+ breweries and 50 miles, then Treehouse shows up, under Chicopee, MA. Which is an interesting choice, because Treehouse is less than 50 miles from Worcester, which is also less than 50 miles from Trillium (although barely), which would certainly show up.

So, maybe there are some details around the "grouping" that aren't clear. Maybe the brewery gets "pinned" to the closest city with more than 40K people?

it's also quite unclear how he used the Ratebeer data. "Data from RateBeer. Only breweries with 3+ beers that were reviewed 10+ times and 50+ total reviews were included. Restricted each brewery to its top 10 beers by review count (which accounted for greater than 90% of all reviews)."

And yet Santa Rosa, his primary example, lists the breweries Bear Republic Cooperage Fogbelt Henhouse Moonlight

...but not Russian River?! It's pretty obvious that Russian River is better rated than Bear Republic, especially by his extended criteria.

So, yeah, I guess I'd like to see his data and code.

Boston is not surprising to me. As a Boston resident when I visit other major metropolitan areas they are exceeding Boston in microbrews and brewpubs, very likely due to cheaper real estate and maybe easier to navigate regulation.

Minneapolis is a great comparison, lots of breweries and tap rooms relatively speaking vs. Boston.

>What city is the microbrew capital of the US?

Why, clearly it's [my city].

That's what is great about the initial load where they try and show your city and what it is ranked. It is a great hook to get people to read why their city is ranked highly by the geniuses that built the list or why their city was unfairly punished by this shit-ranking system that has all sorts of obvious, monumental flaws. (I'm kidding here. I was just really impressed by the subtle-ish localization as a content hook in a unique way.)

Unless your city is Phoenix.

As a teetotaler who eats out with coworkers there are a few good ones that I've eaten at: - Arizona Wilderness Brewing Company: http://www.azwbeer.com - Four Peaks: https://www.fourpeaks.com - The Perch: http://perchpubbrewery.com - Santan Brewing Company: http://santanbrewing.com

None of the above are actually in Phoenix (Tempe and Chandler mostly) so you may be correct :).

I am shocked [my city] isn't higher on this list, I'm immediately going to look through the RateBeer data to find out why this is so biased!

I'm just starting to flirt with the US craft beer scene now that the 'mouthful of hops' trend is subsiding. It seems like hot sauce: once people get acclimated to it, seems they have a hard time properly judging the presence in something they're consuming. It's not the bitterness, it's the nose which totally blows away all of the other ingredients in a beer. I just hope that people won't go barrelling full-speed-ahead into a sourness competition. Maybe I'm just too biased towards evenly balanced flavors from my chef years, but I just can't stand when something is so one-note. (3 different types of hops are the same note on 3 different octaves... I don't care how many subtle aromatic compounds differ between them.)

I think the subjectivity of this kind of data ruins any value in statistical/scientific analysis.

For example, my beer taste developed while I lived in Michigan. The craft scene is more spread out there, but there is a ton of high quality IPAs, Stouts and Porters being brewed in the metro Detroit area.

Now I live in Austin, and the beer here is crap in those categories, but stronger in the Pilsners and Pale Ales. When people down here rate breweries, it is usually much more focused on those categories, thus putting Austin at #13, even though it is trash compared to a Dark Horse, or a Dragonmead, in the "harder to do right" categories. It's just that they don't know any better.

EDIT: But aside from that the presentation was nice, and well executed

EDIT 2: "Pale Ales"

It does seem a bit subjective.

The "weighted blend" of "ratings" might be more accurately portrayed as "Ratings" instead of "Quality."

Technically, your IPAs, stouts, and porters are all ales.

Updated :)

I'm enjoying Chicago's position on that list. Within, say, 3 miles of my house on the North Side there's probably 10-15 breweries plus one distillery I know of.

At the same time, I've seen a few of these small places close up shop. In one case it was a lease dispute with the landlord and they simply couldn't afford to open up again in a new place. It's a tough business for sure and many of these breweries certainly seem to be a labor of love, profitable perhaps, but I think they're in it for the brewing.

The last number I heard for here in San Diego was 140 breweries. Many of these won't meet the criteria for ratings, though.

If you are in town, go to 30th street in North Park and you can walk between something like 10 breweries / tasting rooms, not even including beer bars. It's ridiculous.

Also, Oceanside is closer to SD than many places that are in SD county. (Same could be argued for SF and Santa Rosa)

San Diego gets special mention, because I believe the great American Beer Renaissance started there. The modern (American style) IPA was first (commercially) made in SD in 1996.

As far as I can tell, San Diego is the only county that has its own list of breweries page on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_breweries_in_San_Diego...

The rating system seems odd. Per Capita seems like a better way to go here. http://www.realclear.com/living/2017/01/16/which_us_cities_h...

Portland, ME Boulder, CO Asheville, NC

Any idea why Hood River, OR doesn't factor in? Is there a minimum population cutoff? With 5 breweries and a population of 7,624 it comes out to 65 breweries per 100k.

I can't imagine a better beer scene than Portland, Maine so anything above them must be ridiculous.

Would have liked to see quantity replaced with density (# of microbrews / population)...

Do the words "per capita" ring a bell? :)

> Craft beer — so hot right now. Could Brooklyn, New York, really be the microbrew capital of the US? Nope. It doesn't even make the list. But after analyzing over 1,600 breweries, nearby New York, New York comes in 17th

What a goofy opening! Three of the breweries listed for New York are in Brooklyn and the other two aren't in New York City at all (which is just to say that even if you didn't realize Brooklyn is New York City, its breweries would still have been included because of proximity).

They probably should have been more interested in figuring out why Brooklyn didn't end up on a list that considered 800+ U.S. cities :)

I live in Loveland, CO and while we may not be the microbrew capital we have some damn good beer here. I am always surprised how many breweries the local economy here can support. Just up the road in Fort Collins there are many more including some nationally distributed breweries like New Belgium and Odell. As a beer lover I sometimes feel spoiled!

If you ever find yourself here in Loveland be sure to checkout Grimm Bros: http://grimmbrosbrewhouse.com/

Hold on a second... How is Pittsburgh on the map, but Cleveland is no where to be found?

I know this isn't a completely accurate list, but:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_breweries_in_Ohio#Nort...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_breweries_in_Pennsylva...

Site's presentation is cool. Pretty sloppy language being thrown around, though. Craft breweries are referred to but only microbreweries appear to be ranked, and using some pretty dicey methods at that, leading to a lot of confusion in these comments.

In general, imprecision in the definitions and data is what keeps this debate alive over what the greatest city is for beer. Makes for entertaining internet argument fodder!

RateBeer says it offers world wide data... Just wondering how Germany and Belgium would hold up. So maybe someone can do this for Europe as well ? ;-)

I don't live there, visit frequently, but how the hell is Lexington, KY not on the list? I've been to Grand Rapids, Asheville, Ann Arbor, Denver, Fort Collins, etc and the breweries in Lexington stack up with any of the ones listed. Country Boy and West Sixth have a lot of fantastic beers, the newer breweries (MirrorTwin, Ethereal, Blue Stallion, etc) are really good as well.

What you say is true now ( I don't have first-hand experience), but 20 years ago Denver/Boulder/Ft. Collins was already a hot-bed for microbrews. Before the US as a whole got on board the microbrew-train, the situation was different. There is a reason the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) is in Denver, and the home brewers association is based in Boulder.

I kind of don't understand how you could conclude it's anywhere outside of Oregon, but there's numbers so I guess I'm wrong!

Could very well be where I am now. Grand Rapids, Mi

That's sort of the whole point of this article. Grand Rapids residents consistently claim they are the best "Beer City", or most "Beer City".

But they really aren't. GR doesn't even rank in the top 20, in any of the metrics listed.

https://pudding.cool/2017/04/beer/

They are filtering out some of the biggest breweries in the city so that might have some effect.

https://www.ratebeer.com/p/founders-brewing-company-grand-ra...

Not really sure how they get the number of breweries. Here's all the ones I can think of in the Cleveland area (17) and I can't get it to show up on any list in that map with any filter set.

Bottle House Brew Kettle Brick and Barrel Buckeye Cornerstone Fat Heads Forest City Goldhorn Great Lakes Hansa Market Garden Masthead Nano Platform Portside Sibling Revelry Terrestrial

Similarly I am surprised to see Columbus ahead of Cleveland. I've always been under the impressions that Cleveland's beer scene was much larger

is that 1 brewery with a really long name?

I found their data source interesting - "Only breweries with 3+ beers that were reviewed 10+ times and 50+ total reviews were included." In my city there are probably 12+ breweries, but almost none of them meet the requirements on RateBeer set out by this article to qualify.

Bit disappointing to me. Cities may have various concentration of "picobreweries" not big enough to have a presence on RateBeer. I know I've been to many such breweries on the east coast. Not that I know how an effort of similar scope would account for that nor how strong this effect would be.

I realize sniffing your location in a web page is not anything new, but the way it is used here by adding a leading headline and altering the opening paragraph (those are what I noticed) gives me a vague sense of unease.

I was a bit disappointed not to see DC on the list (or at least, not very high). While the city itself isn't great, Loudoun County (2nd county to the West) has an ever-expanding selection of small breweries.

Pretty impressive that Salt Lake City is #11 given that it's 35% Mormon.

That environment brews names like Polygamy Porter

Beer is truly the drink of distributism: doesn't travel well, highly localized flavor profiles and widespread ownership of the means of production.

I like Sacramento's stuff.

Never thought I'd hear someone on HN mention distributism. GK Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc would be proud.

Sacramento was ranked 172nd on this list... which I felt was a travesty!

shhhhh

Sacramento isn't even mentioned but there are dozens of breweries here: www.sacbeerweek.com/breweries

How does Stone not make the list of Top Breweries in San Diego? Or are they not considered microbrew anymore?

Microbrewery is defined as <15k barrels/year. Stone, according to wikipedia, is outputting 325k barrels/year.

Asheville NC.

Probably. Their RateBeer data indicates only 12 breweries, which seems like it's off by 2-4 fold? There must be at least 30 places within city limits, no? Maybe another 20 or so within 5-10 miles?

They also don't note the brands with East Coast production there like, say, Sierra Nevada and Oscar Blues, which would be hard to argue don't count as breweries.

Anyway, Santa Rosa is so small, it could really be the winner. But per capita, it would be hard to imagine anywhere else besides Asheville would be the spot.

At one point it had the most microbrews per capital.

You should've annexed Belgium when you had a chance in '44. That would've settled the discussion.

Portland? Duh. Hipster ground-zero, globally.

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